Many point and shoot digital cameras today have a video mode. If your video files are stored in a supported format, Picasa will manage them right along with your photo files. The supported formats are: .avi, .mpg, .asf, .wmv and .mov. If any of those files exist on your camera card when you import, they will be imported as well. You will see them in your picasa library. They will look just like a photo, except you will see a movie icon in the lower left corner, like the image at right. And, when you double-click on it, it will play.

Viewing Video files in Picasa 3

You may have several video files in your library right now and not even know it! Picasa 3 gives you an easy way to find out. Just click the filter, ‘Show Movies Only.’ You’ll find the filters at the top of the Picasa window in the middle. Movies is the 4th filter, and it looks like a little piece of movie film. Click that once and now the only items that will be showing in your library are video files.

Uploading Video Files to Web Albums

You can select video files just like you can select photos. When you click once on it, it appears in the ‘picture tray’ or ‘selection area.’ Then, anything that is selected will get uploaded to your Picasa Web Album just by clicking the Upload button (in Picasa 2 this was the Web Album button.) When your friends and family view your Picasa Web Album, they will be able to play your video as easily as as viewing your photos!

Uploading Video Files to Youtube

Picasa 3 has added a lot of new functionality for video files, including a single-click method to upload to Youtube. When you double-click on any video file, you will see the ‘Upload to Youtube’ button at the left. Click on that, make sure you are logged in to your Youtube account, fill out the information fields, and click ‘Upload Video.’ Picasa 3 takes care of all the rest. Just sit back and wait – this will take a while. And, once it’s uploaded, then Youtube still takes more time to ‘process’ it. It may even take a day, but then you can go to youtube.com, log in to your account, and view the video. You can also send a link to anyone else so they can view it too. OR embed it in your blog.

6 Responses to “Picasa 3 and Video Files”

No video files appear in albums after installing Picasa 3! On my hard drive they have all been converted to MOV files??. I would like to get a still off a video but can’t play video or use Picasa function to do that.

Since Picasa 3, the statement in the beginning of the above is proving to be false. The only way I can see .avi files imported since Version 3 is to use the File/Locate on Disk function. There all my files, .jpg and .avi included are shown. It appears, intentionally or unintentionally, the .avi files do not show up in the regular view.